A fast-growing Manchester-based tech business has set itself a target of attracting 25% of its hires through staff referrals.
The CEO of AppLearn, which raised an eight-figure investment from Silicon Valley Bank and Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund – Maven Equity Finance earlier this year, is planning to create at least 60 new jobs.
Andrew Avanessian will be talking about his company’s approach at an exclusive event on June 29th entitled ‘The Great Renegotiation: Is being a HR Director the hardest job in the world?’
Talos360, a leading provider of recruitment technology in the UK, has teamed up with BusinessCloud for the event and Avanessian will be speaking about his experiences alongside senior figures from TalkTalk, KPMG and Summize.
More than two million people across 137 countries already use AppLearn’s technology and Avanessian said they’d had to raise their game to attract the best staff.
He said: “The combination of more vacancies than job seekers in the UK mean it’s an employee’s market.
“Our approach to that problem is to improve the employee experience in order to recruit and retain the best staff but it goes further than that.
“We want to raise engagement levels sufficiently for the team to become our recruiters – aiming for 25% of hires to be an employee referral. It’s a massive task and to do this you need to build the best employee experience.”
AppLearn has recently been ranked 15th in Best Companies’ latest league table of the best technology companies to work but Avanessian stressed this was just the beginning.
“We’re launching a mental health and wellbeing programme and adding volunteer days,” he added.
“There’s also a lot more emphasis on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and using our own people to educate from a grassroots level rather than corporate messaging.
“We’re promoting from within and improving family leave benefits.
“What we’re doing may be common place for larger organisations, but for our size, it’s huge – many SMEs won’t do half of what we do.
“This will help us retain, but will eventually help us recruit as people start to shout about us more and feel more confident about referring people.
“In the way that our customers are our biggest advocates, we want out employees to be our cheerleaders too.
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“We are competing with household brands, and whilst, like many businesses, we’ve found recruitment to be out biggest challenge post-Covid, we have never had an offer turned down and have been able to win in a difficult market.”
The event on June 29th takes place at KPMG’s stunning Manchester offices and will feature a stellar panel of employers and industry experts ready to share their experiences.
Avanessian will be sharing a stage with Dean McGlone, Chief Revenue Officer at Talos360; Joanne Brien, Partner at KPMG; Darragh Lee, Head of Talent Acquisition at TalkTalk; and Ben Audley, Chief Revenue Officer at Summize.